The YouTuber Maximilian “HandofBlood” Knabe has set out with his own LoL team Eintracht Spandau to conquer e-sports in Germany with League of Legends. The team is huge on social media, but in terms of sport, they will still fall short of their great ambitions in 2023. Within a few days, the dream of the German championship and a place in the European Cup was over again.
How did the team go down?
“We always feel outclassed” – team messes up playoffs
How does HandofBlood see it? HandofBlood sounds surprisingly sober on Twitter. It’s the YouTuber and the person speaking, not an egomaniacal artificial figure.
He writes that getting eliminated from the playoffs really hurts because this is how it happened (via twitter):
It’s frustrating to see that when it comes down to it, we simply don’t deliver in terms of sport, let alone meet our own standards.
The YouTuber suggests it’s okay to lose a match and miss goals. But the fact that you’re eliminated without a chance and “is knocked out to 0” rankles him. You always feel outclassed.
He resolves to work as a team to find out what the problem is and work on it.
How are the reactions? Most fans cheer up Handofblood. You’ve achieved so much in a short amount of time. He shouldn’t let himself down. But some are already disappointed after the strong regular season: The league went well, but we’re still practicing with the playoffs, it’s about elimination.
But his team Eintracht Spandau is always provocative on social media and teases the opponents, only Koreans and a few randoms would play there, you etched on YouTube against the Unicorns of Love, who compete with 2 Koreans and 3 Germans.
The team is now sure of ridicule: “Less social media, more focus on the game” rubs the Berliners in the face on Twitter.
This is behind it: Eintracht Spandau relies on 4 players who are 25 and 26 years old: only the supporter Lillip is 22,
So it’s not a team with “talents” who might make it big again, but it’s a team with seasoned players who should now win.
So there’s no option to be patient and give players more time and trust that they’ll thrive in the years to come. Players will have to be brought in and let go again, which actually goes against HandofBlood’s plan to develop a team that stays together over the long term to allow identification with the players.
Originally, the team also wanted to rely more on German players, but they have probably said goodbye to that. The ideas that you had about building a team “from the neighborhood” don’t easily fit into the sporting reality.
Eintracht Spandau’s casters are top-notch, but the team is a bit lacking:
Even if Eintracht Spandau is way ahead in social media, “sporting success” in LoL is hardly predictable: Even professional teams fluctuate in LoL. Teams that become world champions one year don’t matter at all the next because of a single player departure or a crisis of form.
When a team gets stuck in their minds that “you’re strong in the league but you’re going down in the playoffs,” that’s a serious problem that HandofBlood will have to deal with a lot.
But that’s a problem he doesn’t have exclusively. The nominally best player in Europe and the two best German players have also had a total nightmare season and nobody really knows why:
LoL: The 2 best German players switch to Perkz’s super team, fail – “Doesn’t feel like real”